KW-21 Chapter 200. Back to the beginning.

and onwards to the future. Where else?

The winter of 2018, perhaps the last deep winter in the old rolling hills of the Vogtland, saw the alignment of a dozen life events and a single conviction that has taken seven years to start to understand. I can not fully explain what brought me to that lawyer’s office - in one of Leipzig or Dresden; I genuinely forget - which triggered a bank transfer, a signature on a page, and a phase marked “Pirate” in the eternal Rube Goldberg of my existence.

Today, a visitor to the Barracks drives, walks or cycles a little further into the forest than they are expecting, but nonetheless soon reaches the wrought iron double gates, draped with camouflage netting and rust, barriers to separate the project from the past.

A little over five hectares of abandoned army institution has become the Loft, the Big House, the potager, soft fruits and orchard. The pig house appears to mark the edge of this island in the forest, but beyond it still the Big Path, the swamp and the lake to be discovered. Grand names for minor features. Ironic, in-joke hyperbole amuses me - and somehow keeps me tethered here, bound to a place that has never quite let go of its old shadows.

For a little over half of its existence, The Barracks was exactly that. A solidly built, cheaply erected flat roofed house for the conscripted youth watching in the shadow of the Iron Curtain. The end of Europe, the start of the Soviet hemisphere. In the 1990s, it became a louder, a more chaotic shelter for families seeking refuge in the newly reunified Germany.

Barracks, asylum seeker home, two worlds which have moved on without forwarding address, two euphemisms for prison.

A decade later, my predecessor undertook the conversion from state tool to private residence. Within the contract, the requirement to render all but the smallest part of the bricks and mortar unliveable. When he left, he finished the job.

Under my stewardship, six years and change, I have set out to experiment with flora and form, radically examining the limits of vegan self sufficiency whilst finding quiet purpose in happy doomerism. Resonances of Camus abide. I passionately believe that the pointlessness of existence is the very justification for living the best, richest lives in joy and in love. In allowing our own irrelevance we meet the uncarved block, hear the wisdom of the river and experience the fundamental interconnectedness of all things¹

This adventure is too rich not to share - sharing is also a requirement. The Barracks should be a place where remarkable things happen. My job is to set up the environment where they might, and then to tell people about it.

We live on a planet reshaped to fit our own cravings. Very few of the creatures on it roam freely, they have been either pressed into our service or made extinct by our voraciousness. Almost all land surface has been repurposed to our needs. It is a world built on sacrifice: water, air, all living creatures, ecosystems and time itself serve our appetites. No one sensible thinks that this can continue, but any change in our own lives seems an infringement too far.

The Barracks is my ideal of a defence against that continuation. Not a solution, exactly, but a counterspell.

In my role as storyteller, I created the newsletter. It was sold to you as a glimpse behind the pictures into the soul of the project. It is also a place for me to practice writing to a schedule. Developing a discipline rather than grandiloquent flourishes. Not a great expanse of prose, but something steady.

I rarely know how it is going to turn out when I start typing, even though I might make notes all week - half thoughts, overthought phrases, compost of the brain. By the time 5am rolls around on a Monday morning, the newsletter is already written, I just need to discover it word by word, keyboard clack by clickerty clack.

This is the 200th weekly edition. I believed that it was going to be a light and whimsical look at the adventures of the last six-plus years. I enjoy puncturing my own pomposity (not that I have a lack of very capable deputies to do it for me!) and already had a title for it. “33 ways not to start a vegan self sufficient community. 200 weeks of screw ups”. That one will still be written, but not today.

Today is a milestone, no doubt. But it’s not a celebration. When I think about how far we have collectively come, it’s hard to say that it has even been forwards. But here we are. The path still winds through the forest, still leads to the barracks and that rusty iron gate still creaks happily when new people, new thoughts prise it open.

If you have footsteps to add to the story, come walk through it.

With much Pirate Love

Your Loving Pirate Ben

xoxo

1. The Tao of Pooh, Benjamin Hof; Siddharta, Herman Hesse: Dirk Gently’s Detective Agency, Douglas Adams